I need your help Dark Hersey forum!

As titled, Ive got a new player thats ready and willing to play, but has never even heard of pen & paper games. Hes had help from one of us to make an assassin whos going to be all about close combat, i guess... Anyway, I want to run a campaign thats easy for him to understand whats what and to feel comfort in playing with the rest of us. Any suggestions or ideas on how to go about doing that. As a side note, my Ascension iscomming in the mail today or tomorrow! cant wait!

Brinkosanity said:

A good idea is the Mind Cleansed background.

That way, you don't need to know anything!

I caught a break on this one, as my "newbie" was in fact a veteran gamer, but a total 40K virgin. I handed him my copy of Eisenhorn.

ZillaPrime said:

I've been reading Shira Calpurnia recently and I think that might be a better source for new players as the books really lay on the setting detail. Eisenhorn is great, but you are getting a unique perspective from him, being a baddass Inquisitor and all.

I learned about Dark Heresy from the Dawn of War games, so that could be a start if they are a gamer (personally prefer the original dawn of war dark crusade, dawn of war soul storm to the current DOW2 release).

At some point someone pointed me to the cool short story: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/tombworld4/pages/dem.html

Of course none of that touches on some of the core elements of Dark Heresy (or Warhammer 40K) which is the politics, bureaucracy, intregue, and religion, which are really the heart of the soul of the 40k universe. But I found that learning the basics got me more and more interested in the deeper lore. For a begining player it may be easier to let the mystery unfold, after all DH rules support characters from all kinds of backwoods barely civilized origins. Let them learn about the universe first hand in game.

A newblood huh, had one of those in my last DH campagin. She wanted to play an assassin too, we discussed the options and opted for Guardsman instead. We decided to make her come from a midevil-style Imperial world (low-tech black powder but openly run by the Imperial cult) tithed out into the guard. I passed her my copy of the imperial Infantryman's uplifting primer a week before we started her chargen and that helped, but all in all when you have someone who is a 40k universe newbie it's pretty easy to slot him forom an 'outback' world.

Once it is settled that he is pretty ignorant of the universe at large (We had endless fun arguing in game about the Tyranid's PUNY claws as indicated in teh Primer), it falls to you and your group to kid-glove him into working with the rules. Sit him (or her as in my case). Especially in DH, you can let them try out a few NPC's or Expendable characters too to get the hang of the rules (gods how we love killing off those expendables).

the RP aspect can be a bit trickier, try to sit them close to you as the GM and draw them into RP situations. I found a tailor-made short-stop adventure (find the monster-kill the monster sorta thing) can do the trick nicely.

My personal preference runs toward the solo prelude. All my players in the current campaign were new both to the game (and mostly to RPGs as well) and to th 40k universe, so I opted for GMing introductory sessions to them in smaller groups or individually. The sessions started out as "a day in the life" stories where they could acclimate to the basics of the game system and the society, but would then culminate in them coming to the attention of an Inquisitor. This way they could familiarize themselves with the world around them while I got a solid grasp of their characters and kicked off the plot of the campaign.

As an added bonus, separate introductory sessions allow players to form subjective interpretations of Imperial values, making for some interesting moral conflicts between PCs down the line.

I think this is a two-pronged attack.

1.) I would have him read some of my favorite parts of the Core Rulebook that - in my opinion - are very good at describing the 40K universe and familiarizing a player with the game world. In Chapter IX: Life in the Imperium pgs. 248-258 are awesome. They go over space travel, communications, planetary governments, and threats to the Imperium. We don't want our noob entering the world thinking its like Star Wars with fancy, long-range holo-images and space travel that is so fast you can hardly get a game of chess in against a wookie before arriving at your destination!!! Lets show him/her the frightening darkness of space.

2.) Design a Mission that exposes many of the game's aspects. What I mean by this is instead of running a typical Mission that forces players to use only a handful of the most popualr skills and combat checks - try and incorporate a lot more. Create a scene where hiding/sneaking (i.e - opposed rolls) come into play. How about a couple of Fellowship tests to gather info? Also use parts of combat that may not be that popular. Try a grapple or a knock-down, or a charge.

I used this method in my D&D campaigns back in the day. I would often set up an adventure that would show noobs how the game actually plays out and put them in the spotlight. Lets not focus on search checks and combat. If we do that, the new player will instantaneously become a power gamer. Does he have the drive skill? Throw in a chase through a crowded city street. Does he have Forbidden Lore (Warp)? Toss him a clue about a strange rift in reality. Not only will this serve as a run-down of rules, it will also show the noob - and maybe even remind your veterans - how large the world is and what can be accomplished with a myriad of skills and knowledges.

Have fun and good luck!!!

My entire group started like this. I handed out Ravenor, Eisenhorn, and the Gaunt's Ghosts books. No Space marines, it will make them whiny.

I started them off waking in warp, conveniently amnesiac, with a grizzled sergeant NPC escort. This allowed them to get used to the mechanics (sergenat acting as a crutch), and he would fill them in as all sorts of xenos, heretics, and the like reared their head. He also gave a running commentary on the 40k world (or much of the ship based bits), and the evident shortcomings of the PC's parents.

When we started only one of us had any experience playing RPG's.

I think I'd seen a friend in high school run D&D once, but I'd never played it. I'd played computer RPG, sure, but no P&P. All of us had been playing 40K for years though except, ironically, the only one with RPG experience.

So we leapt in head first, but I made sure not to waste all the cool ideas I had in the first game. I started as many have suggested here, with prelude or prologue scenarios related to the main plot but wholly contained within themselves (two characters running from pursuing Guards, two characters trying to break a third out of an Arbite Stronghold, and three characters relaxing at a Space Port that gets attacked by Human & Ork pirates). Almost all of the characters from these games have now transitioned into the campaign proper, but the prologue games helped us to learn the rules, work out what we were doing wrong (and we were doing a lot wrong), and learn the game from there.

Teaching the 40K newbie has been hard, but he has taken up a Tau and Grey Knight army so is slowly learning, and in our last game the group (mostly) acted as a proper team for the first time. Next session is in a week's time (our sessions are roughly 12+ hours long, so we can have a month+ between each one! ), and we're all looking forward to moving along and seeing the next part of the plot.

BYE